Trunk linings essentially consist of a surface material, especially of a textile or sheet fabric, and an absorber on the backside, which may also have supporting properties, as a stiffening non-woven, for example. A wide variety of materials are employed for the absorber, stiffening non-woven or pure support. Supports made of plastic, especially injection-molded supports, are laminated after molding, or the textile top material is back-injected with the support material. Another solution is represented by textile-coated plastic sheets that are prepared by extrusion-coating the plastic as a pure plastic, or filled with inorganic agents as well as different fibers, onto the textile, and subsequently forming by pressing.
One specific embodiment of the plastic is polyolefin foams, which are preformed and laminated. Alternatively, a textile surface may also be foam-coated.
Known absorbers, insulations compressed into a stiffening non-woven or support, include a wide variety of fibers (plastic and natural fibers), which are bonded with a bonding agent of thermoplastic or thermosetting nature in a blank production process, thermally of by needling, or in the subsequent processing. Known bonding agents include polypropylene, acrylates or resins of various nature, as well as bicomponent (BiCo) fibers, which essentially consist of a PET core and often a coPET coat.
The thermoplastic absorber and a textile surface material are heated and then deformed and cooled in a cold mold. Depending on the degree of deforming, the absorber, which may also have supporting properties for the component, is partially thinned and thus weakened. In order to achieve the required mechanical properties in such deformed regions, the non-deformed or little deformed regions are oversized. Thus, the component has a higher weight than would be necessary for strength.
Acoustically open floor covers (carpets) include, starting from the visible surface, for example, needle-punched, dilours or tufting carpets with fiber bonding. In order to achieve the necessary stiffness, an absorber or compressed mixed fiber web is mostly firmly connected with the carpet. The carpet and the absorber or the compressed mixed fiber web are deformed on a deformation device, and subsequently trimmed. The absorber and the insulation are produced separately.
Foam absorbers or insulations are an exception; they are essentially foamed onto the carpet, which naturally leads to an acoustically closed carpet, which does not correspond to the object of being highly absorptive and flow-open.
Components from a fiber-filling or airlay technology as well as card-laid non-wovens of pure PET or mixed fibers are known as open absorbers or insulations. The non-woven insulations include non-deformed (planar), (pre)deformed blanks as well as insulations prepared by the fiber-flock method, in particular.
The blanks themselves can be deformed, or bonded onto the carpet as segments. A disadvantage of all these methods is the high demand for devices and the necessary process steps associated therewith.
Such floor lining systems are described, for example, in DE 10 2004 046 201 A1, DE 103 60 427 A1, DE 199 60 945 A1 and DE 10 2007 036 952 A1.